Today's challenger said he'd been on before, but there is no record of a John Owens on the wiki; however, a Jon Owens appeared in Series 22 (roughly 25 years ago) and won one game, which he said he had. Going to move Jon's page to the spelling "John" and add redirects, but please let me know immedia...

Plus, was anyone frustrated that Phil didn't opt for a final vowel on the last letters? Little bit -- either a final E or A would have given a fairly simple 9. FAVELAS as a beater to LOAVES/HALVES. 2nd Numbers Alt.: 75 * 8 - 25 * (5 - 3) - 1 Optimal efficiency 1-away solution on 3rd numbers: (25 + ...

How rare it is for someone who is not of British Origin to be a contestant on the show, and the last place you'd probably expect...Norway! Actually, based on geographic proximity alone, Norway is one of the first (non-British/Irish) places I'd expect a Countdowner to be from... :p But still, good o...

On a similar culinary note. I've only recently found out when you cook a steak the redness oozing out is not blood it's myoglobin, found in muscle tissue I legitimately wonder if Michael Calder learned this fact shortly before he filmed the Series 42 grand final (featuring his famous declaration of...

Nope, but now that you've spotted it it's pretty remarkable -- the first six letters were identical to those in the previous letters round! I'm sure Graeme could tell us if that's ever happened before.

Was anyone else rather enraged when Chris went 6 small, given the circumstances? Very glad Rachel managed to come through on that one. Don't really see a problem with it. Nothing was really at stake. Why do you? From a purely Apterous-esque point of view, I was just concerned that the highest max r...

Whoever set the lyrics of Joy to the World to music. "Heaven" is quite obviously a two-syllable word and has two perfectly handy beats available for it in the last line of the first verse, and yet it's always sung as "And heh-ehvn , and heh-ehvn and nature sing", with the first syllable stretched ov...

Wow. Just... WOW. Congratulations to Tom and commiserations to Bra; this could literally be game of the week if it was the grand final of an Apterous tourney. I'm heading back to bed right about now, but I'm sure I'll have more congrats to give later in the day. 3rd Numbers Alt. ("standard method"?)...

...are we being trolled? This is the first time for a while I've wanted to be really disparaging about the ability of a contestant... but she is, so far, bloody hopeless. I'm guessing that Emma may have been the reserve contestant they needed to bring in after Bradley octoed and they needed an extr...

All spots for the Series 77 finals are now claimed, and there are still seven heats left in the series. If someone wins the next six games and loses the seventh and last heat, and six wins proves to be enough to make it into the Series 78 finals, can this person be entered into the Series 78 finals...

I think I know the answer to this question, but I'm genuinely curious: All spots for the Series 77 finals are now claimed, and there are still seven heats left in the series. If someone wins the next six games and loses the seventh and last heat, and six wins proves to be enough to make it into the ...

Am soon off to Vancouver for Xmas again and will probably not be able to do wiki recaps for any days after Monday, 18 December (3rd quarter final) -- could somebody step in and polish off the Tuesday through Friday editions?

A very high max this game with 4 nines available, all of them new. EDIT: Actually AGISTMENT isn't new, so 5 nines available, 4 of them new. Agreed, almost makes up for the complete 9-lessness of Bradley's first four games. I could use a good falseagram for SIDEROTIL, it seems quite probable and it'...

Not sure if it's still too early to ask this question, even in a spoilerific thread, but for wiki purposes I'd like to know ahead of time: For anyone who attended the finals or knows someone who did, were all of the top eight seeds of the series able to play , or were there people from the top eight...

Clock must have had a bit of Monday laziness during the conundrum today -- Graeme and others have buzzed at least as early, if not earlier, than his buzz today, and yet today his recorded clock time was still under 1 second.

Also, to put this question out: If I saw a word after the 30 seconds, and I was 2nd to declare, would that be acceptable?, as I saw DISALLOW just as Graeme declared an 8. Many thanks. I would say that's fair game, provided you also state that your word is not written down. MUCONATE as a beater and ...

Mildly interesting fact regarding James Kennedy's lack of badged and medalled words: his only 9 and arguably most impressive spot of COUNTABLE would have received both honours, had it not been claimed earlier this series by a certain John Cowen...

Was OUTEARN removed in the last update? If not, its disallowal could have decided the game -- had it been allowed, the score after the conundrum would have been 49-49 and Lawrie would still have had a shot on the tie-break.